Inequalities in London

Part of Opposition Day – in the House of Commons at 4:55 pm on 12 July 1988.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Simon Hughes Simon Hughes Shadow Spokesperson (Education), Shadow Spokesperson (Health) 4:55, 12 July 1988

We can all quote statistics. I remind the hon. Member for Hampstead and Highgate (Sir G. Finsberg) that at the last election, as at the one before, the majority of Londoners voted against his party. Opposition Members representing London constituencies speak for more than half the voters of London.

I want to start with people and not statistics. It will not be surprising if I speak about people that I have come across in the royal borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Yesterday morning I took part in a press conference for my colleague William Goodhart, who is our candidate in Thursday's by-election. On the way back I walked through the underpass at Notting Hill Gate. That underpass leads to the tube station and also serves as a means of crossing the road. I was approached by a young man and a young woman who were begging for money. The young man was called David and was an 18-year-old Scot. The girl was 19 years old and Irish and her name was Renèe. They go to Notting Hill every day because there are rich people in Kensington. They think that in Kensington they may get money, in one case to visit a boy friend outside London or in the other case to buy the other contact lens that David needs.

People are begging in the streets of Kensington in 1988. The two people that I have mentioned squat in Peckham in a one-bedroom flat that houses at least six people every night. They wait for the person who occupies the flat to come home and let them in but last night he did not come home at all and one of them slept in the lift. They do not find London a place of equality of opportunity or choice.

Somebody in my office dug out a short quotation which is perhaps appropriate. It says: Whene'er I walk the public ways, How many poor that lack ablution Do probe my heart with pensive gaze, And beg a trivial contribution! Perhaps the one quote we have not yet heard from the Prime Minister will say: "For ye have the poor always with you and they are to be blessed." In London there are now more poor people than when the Prime Minister went to No. 10 Downing street.

I should like to mention two other people, who feature on this poster. One is the Duke of Buccleuch and Queensbury, a resident of the London borough of Kensington. He lives in two houses, 44 and 46 Bedford gardens. He pays rates and he will have to pay poll tax, but he will save £1,757 under the poll tax. He and his wife will have to pay about £470. Of course, he voted for that inequitable tax in the other place. In the same area, Fred Leaney works as a porter in a block of flats and lives in Henry Dickens court, W11. He and his wife will have to pay the same amount of poll tax, because they do not qualify for benefit. They will have to pay £433 more than they pay in rates. That is how the Government legislate for equality in London. A porter in a block of flats will pay the same as one of the richest Members of the other place.